


Closing the Distance

by walking_through_autumn



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 12:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2191833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walking_through_autumn/pseuds/walking_through_autumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, three times Kaneki keeps a distance, and one time Hide closes it. (Spoilers up to chapter 136.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closing the Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Tokyo Ghoul kink meme.

1.

Hide had always said that Kaneki would do anything to find a quiet place to read and hide from the world. Kaneki had never been the type to get offended, so he had thought about it – hushed corners in parks, a cocoon of blankets and pillows in his own silent apartment, the dusty corridor in the library where they shelved the encyclopedias – and he had nodded and agreed, smiling at Hide.

“ _Dude, you should climb to the top of a tree and read there!_ ” Hide had said while laughing. “ _Nobody will disturb you – except me, of course,_ ” Hide added, so matter-of-fact there left no doubt in Kaneki’s mind that Hide would, in fact, climb a tree just to bother him.

Kaneki had winced. “ _I don’t really – uh – climb trees…_ ”

Hide had rolled his eyes. It was in his good-natured way, the same way he would tease Kaneki whenever his eyes lingered too long on a pretty girl. “ _Wimp,_ ” Hide said.

Kaneki shrugged then, because it was true, and as long as Hide was alright with him the way he was he did not quite care that he was a wimp who did not like excessively tall places or danger.

He wonders what Hide would think now, if he could see him standing on top of one of Tokyo’s skyscrapers, staring down at the intricate web of lights spread through the city. He is so high up he can only hear the sound of his clothes slapping against his skin and hair against his face, the wind toying with him, so strong it might send him over the edge if he is not careful. From this height he can no longer distinguish houses from schools from corporate buildings – and Hide’s home is but a speck in the darkness, inconsequential and unimportant to the city as a single drop of water is to the vast ocean.

Kaneki tries though. He stares as hard as he can in the direction of Hide’s home (or where he thinks it should be). If he wills it he could almost remember the scent of pancakes Hide’s mother used to make for them, drowned in syrup the way Hide likes them. The mess of clothes and cushions and games that made up Hide’s room. For a minute he closes his eyes against the wind and fantasizes knocking on Hide’s door, heart thumping fast for the seconds it takes for the door to open and for the flood of light to fall on him, Hide’s eyes sweeping past his white hair with nary a care and resting only on his eyes, lips widening and opening to say, “ _You’re late. Welcome h –_ ”

He snaps open his eyes. Tokyo still looks the same, a dark and cold mass spread beneath his feet with endless glittering lights, humans – and ghouls – going about their lives, Hide just one of the thousands of beings, his home one of hundreds of buildings.

He won’t go near again. He can’t. This is as close as he will allow himself, his imagination that Hide is somewhere, safe and far away from him, far away from his so-called friend who once tried to eat him.

.

2.

Of course, he has a habit of breaking promises he makes to himself. ‘ **I won’t eat humans** ’ comes to mind, and he almost smiles at the memory of Touka shoving the meat into his mouth, of Yoshimura’s gentle persuasion and his first packet of human flesh. ‘ **I do not want to kill** ’ is another, that day against the tall man with resolute eyes from the CCG, and how long did it take him to break that? He wonders who he had been trying to fool.

Kaneki sighs to himself on the rooftop of a university building. It has become his favourite hideout lately, in between hunting information and training and taking care of his makeshift gang. Hidden in an alcove, he could see and not be seen, just the way he likes it. From here he has the best view of Hide running around the campus, helping out in one thing or another. He wonders if it’s the festival, or if that has already passed.

Hide looks healthy. His hair flies in the wind as he runs with posters in his arms, eyes squinted against the slanted afternoon light. For a while Kaneki had selfishly wondered whether Hide would look worried over his disappearance – but this sight of Hide relieves him more than he could say. Hide turns his head and shouts something or another to a student – Kaneki thinks it might be “I’ll be with you in a sec!” The same unfaltering grin, the same amount of enthusiasm. Kaneki shifts in his position, never taking his eyes off Hide.

Long ago, in what seemed like a different world, he would have been sitting at a table on the far side of the building, contented to read his book or his notes, to wait while Hide finished whatever it was he was engaged with before they went for a meal or a drink or home.

He wonders if Hide misses that world just as much as Kaneki does.

He blinks, watching as Hide slows and eventually pauses in his steps, something puzzled in his expression. Kaneki thinks perhaps he is looking for a place for a poster, or perhaps he has dropped something – he is certainly looking around as though expecting to find something, cautious as though he does not want to miss even the slightest detail.

Then Hide lifts his eyes and Kaneki freezes in the shadow, the direct target of that clear gaze.

For a long moment there is nothing but the sound of the students moving in the corridors, murmurs, distant laughter. The minute hand on the clock tower takes the last inch towards the top. Hide stands washed in sunlight, his gaze never wavering from the rooftop as the bell rings, a deep echo – _one, two, three, four_ –

Somebody on the ground floor of the building screams in laughter and the spell is broken. Hide lowers his eyes and continues on his way, steps slower than they had been.

It takes a while for Kaneki to realize he had stopped breathing, and a longer while to register the twisting sensation in his heart that feels a lot like disappointment.

.

3.

At least one thing hasn’t changed from when he had been a full human. Bookstores are still his refuge with their smooth spines of books along every shelf and the smell of clean, new, exciting worlds. It is not fair that Hinami is cooped up at the base because of his worries, and guilt compels him to at least find some new titles she could enjoy. He makes a beeline for Takatsuki Sen out of habit, a familiar sense of pleasure coursing through him just at the sight of his favourite works. He had already read it, but he flips through her latest work in any case, wondering if Hide would pick this up.

He knows Hide doesn’t like books the same way Kaneki does, though never once has he complained about spending time in a bookstore when Kaneki wants to buy something. He finds ways to entertain himself, reading over Kaneki’s shoulder or commenting loudly on cover art works or doing a running commentary. “ _Kaneki_ ,” Hide once said, with the contemplative look of one who is deeply troubled, “ _Kaneki, I fear you will never marry._ ”

At that point, Kaneki had blinked out of his reverie and regarded his friend. “ _What?_ ”

“ _You see, how would you ever have sex if you have your nose in a book the whole time?_ ”

Hide had laughed for days afterwards at how red Kaneki was then.

Reading now, in the muted buzz of the bookstore, without his friend beside him, Kaneki’s fingers twitch and he imagines a phantom chin on his shoulder, blond hair brushing against his ear, huffs of breath against his cheek.

He thinks this is how people go insane. Not because of people like Yamori, or the CCG guy who did the same to him, but this tide of memories, unstoppable like waves on a seashore, receding at points only to crash back with full force. Scent and warmth and laughter worming their way into him, achingly boring and ordinary days, until he feels he can never forget, no matter how time has passed or how he has changed.

He does not know how he manages – at some point much later he finds himself with new books in his arms for himself and Hinami. He pulls himself out of the corridor and heads to the cashier, side-stepping people with ease, past the shelves of anatomy and physiology where he sees, as though to mock him, a shock of blond hair among the black –

He pauses, eyes wide, and then he almost wants to laugh at and punch himself, dig his hand deep into his chest to twist the organ into submission.

Because this is a punishment, a test, his hallucination and nights of heavy loneliness materializing into his best friend standing there intent on a book of human anatomy. Hide still looks healthy, but this time perhaps more serious than before as he flips through the pages detailing the human make-up, another tome on ghouls tucked under his arm – solemn, intense, traces of laughter erased from the face Kaneki is so familiar with.

Kaneki chokes back a sob. He does not want to imagine why Hide is reading up on humans and ghouls – _but **you** of all people should know_ , a voice the mix of Rize’s and Yamori’s murmurs in his head – and he flees to the cashier, wondering whether he would lose even this refuge, this place where he might see the first person he had sworn to protect.

.

4.

Sometimes – a lot of times, really – he thinks, petulant and childish, that it is not fair. Is there not a limit to what a being, human or ghoul, can take? He had thought the time with Yamori had driven him to the brink of sanity, but with the time in Kanou’s basement, and now having staggered away from the battle with Amon, he starts to think perhaps he has already gone insane and he only snatches pockets of sanity when the gods take pity on him. All he had wanted was a place to belong, the refuge Yoshimura had offered once again, the security of friends around him – that was all, so this does not feel justified.

_The world is warped_ , something in him whispers, gleeful and dark. His senses shrink to the pain within him and the white-hot fever, the sensation of being eaten from the inside, body and mind. In the haze he registers himself screaming and gasping for breath in between the screams – he thinks he remembers flashes of when he was once himself. A small sticky hand in his as a boy with a missing tooth laughs with him, the cool whirl of air-conditioning in a library with stacks and stacks of notes around them, smooth coffee on his tongue and the crisp tones of the news reporter in the background as his friend, half-jokingly, asks, “ _Who is the person you’ve got your eye on this time?_ ”

Or is it, “Kaneki, hey, you dressed for a costume party or something?”

It cannot be though. It cannot be Hide, Hide whom he has sworn to keep at a distance, lest he start seeing his friend as meat, as less than the bundle of laughter and reassurance and warmth that Kaneki wants so badly to hold onto the way a child holds onto his teddy bear. Hide who is walking towards him with steady steps, _splish-splosh_ through the water, as though Kaneki is not a monster to be feared. In the red mist of panic he stares at Hide, the way Hide is smiling in a sheepish manner, like this is just a normal day when he had drooled on one of Kaneki’s favourite books and is bringing him to _Big Girl_ to make up for it.

“Hey,” Hide says.

_You should not be here, you can’t be here, you can’t know that I’m a ghoul, that I’m **worse** than a ghoul_ , is what Kaneki should say, but all he can register is the way Hide sweeps his gaze over Kaneki’s white hair and mask for barely a second before meeting his eyes, face crinkling up in a smile.

“I know all that,” Hide says, as though he had heard what Kaneki was trying to say – or perhaps Kaneki had said it in the haze of confusion.

The warmth of his hand against Kaneki’s shoulder is unreal – like the phantom chin on his shoulder, or the puff of breath against his cheek – he cannot trust it. But Hide – _Hide, Hide, Hide_ , his own spot of sunlight, his reminder of what it had been like to be happy – his lips widen and open to say, “It doesn’t matter, so let’s go home already.”

His mind latches onto the words. They spiral out in his head, like the lit-up streets of Tokyo beneath his feet, reaching into corners, twining their way in, mashing with the jumble of memories and hallucinations until Kaneki is sure of nothing and all he can do is rip himself away from the hand on his shoulder, throw his head back –

and scream.


End file.
